Russian Railways Translation Gaffe: A Shower in Exchange for a Soul

June 29, 2018

Sergei Fadeichev / TASS

The price of a shower on Russian Railways? Your soul, if the translation offered up on a sign in the World Cup host city of Volgograd is any indication.

The similarity between the Russian words for “shower” and “soul” (“dush” and “dusha,” respectively) led to a sign offering for-pay showers in Volgograd to be mistakenly translated as “The cost of the service is the soul.”

The first Twitter user who posted a photograph of the sign ridiculedit as “irrefutable proof that Russian Railways is a subsidiary of hell.”

https://twitter.com/VladlenLos/status/1012390387154145282

Predictably, Twitter had a field day with the gaffe.

https://twitter.com/katiedavies91/status/1012638928162250757

https://twitter.com/yaffaesque/status/1012643648155144192

“Obviously, whoever translated this sign didn’t bother to think, or he was making a deal with the devil,” the website Weirdrussia.com observed.